The present invention relates to transparencies and, more particularly, to an arrangement designed to facilitate the reading of Torah and similar scrolls during Jewish religious services.
The Torah scroll plays a central and virtually daily role in the lives of those who practice the ritualistic aspects of the Jewish faith. These scrolls contain the Hebrew text of the first five books of the Old Testament and selected portions of other Old Testament portions, e.g., the Prophets. In adherence to millennium old custom, the Hebrew text in these scrolls is presented in the form of adjacently placed columns of text, with a continuous stream of words, and no spacing between sentences or punctuations of any type.
Indeed, religious custom requires that the text be read to the assembled congregation utilizing correct word pronunciation, special musical vocalization, tonal and syllabic sound inflections and various pauses that are specified by vowels and a special notation system that is only available in separate copies of the Torah text, but is forbidden to be added to or to appear on the parchment of which the Holy Torah scrolls are made. Therefore, cantors, Rabbis, or lay people who are called upon to read from the Torah to the congregants, must spend a great deal of time preparing in advance the reading of the Torah, by memorizing these Torah reading vowels, symbols and notations. Aside from the extra effort, even the experienced Torah reader will suffer occasional lapses of memory and thus skip or misapply one or more notes or pauses, which is undesirable from the perspectives of religious requirements, professional pride and other considerations.
The problem is aggravated when a number of people congregate impromptu to conduct services and then discover that no one present is capable or ready to read the current portion of the Torah and one of the congregants is called upon to “wing it”.
U.S. patent application publication no. U.S.2004/0257301 A1 describes a method and means for projecting signs onto printed matter, including Torah scrolls. U.S. patent application publication No. U.S.2002/0096037 A1 describes a system for teaching melodies, including in connection with the singing or chanting of religious or liturgical texts which form part of the services in a Jewish Synagogue or Temple. U.S. Pat. No. 6,581,869 describes an apparatus and method for facilitating scrolling of scrollable documents such as a Torah. The contents of the aforementioned U.S. patent publications and issued patent are incorporated by reference herein.